Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

NICKSTER117 — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:53:20 GMT

Me and my Bro just built a computer. here are the specs

CPU: intel Q6600 clocked to 3600 Mhz

temp: 100 Fahrenheit

Video card: ATI Raedon HD 3870

HDD: Hitachi 250 GB 7200 Rpm 3.0/GPS

Mother board: ASUS With EPU

Monitor: Old one

CD drive: Super writemaster

Case: Thermal Take Armor LCS with liquid cooling system

And My windows experience is 5.9. i thought that this was a mistake but i learned that the score can only go to 5.9.

Rolling out Windows Home Server with a HP MediaSmart Server

The Windows Experience Blog — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:27:11 GMT

This weekend I completed the roll-out of my new HP MediaSmart Server running Windows Home Server. I ordered

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

bit_smart — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 15:23:17 GMT

How big is the power supply on your computer? Did you have to upgrade it to accomodate the minimum requirements of the Nvidea 8600 GTS. The 8600 needs 350 watts of power and the 8600 GTS needs 400 watts of power. My computer only has the standard 300 watt power supply. I was looking at the same graphics cards. Someone suggested that the cards would still run with a 300 watt supply but this does not seem like a good idea.

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

bit_smart — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 15:19:17 GMT

5.9 is currently the highest score that can be attained. However, as technology advances they will expand the scale beyond 5.9 rather than reduce your computer score.

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

nhaslam — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 18:26:53 GMT

I've got an :

Intel Core 2 Quad

4Gb Geil DDR2 Ultra

Sparkle 8800GTS

and some SATA2 drive.

It gives me

CPU 5.9

Memory 5.2

Graphics are 5.9 each

Drive is 5.6

Not entirely sure why the memory is so low, and i'm probably going to upgrade the drive to a raptor at some point next year.

Thats on Vista Ultimate 32bit though, not 64bit.

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

keh — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:03:03 GMT

Yeah, I definitely would have went with Intel... I used to be solidly in the AMD camp, but they have really lagged behind in the current generation.

with the e6850 i get a rating 0f 5.7

my 4gb of ram (only running at 800) is rated at 5.9

My ATI x1900 is rated at 5.9 for graphics and 5.8 for gaming.

My WD Raptor system drive also gets a 5.9

Overall performance is a 5.7 - That's running Vista 64

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

StophVista — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 06:01:43 GMT

AMD's processors were FAR FAR better than Intel's up until the Core 2 Duo which is better, but there still isn't that much of a gap between them. I have looked at a bunch of bench marks online and they are unreallistically one sided one way or the other, usually they don't use identical systems or settings and say that they are similar. I went with an AMD 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ and I might upgrade to the 6000+ which I have at work. I work at a cable studio and do lots of video editing (we had gotten a mac too, but it was slow, hard to get used to, and everything had to be rendered. I love PCs so much more!)

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

Bryan — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:40:34 GMT

I am running Vista Ultimate x64 and have a DViCO HDTV5Express TV Tuner. I built the machine in February when Vista came out and (at the time) the DViCO was advertised as the only tuner card that would support digital HDTV in Vista x64. Media Center had some funky requirements for this functionality so I used DViCO's supplied player.

Then I found out that you can watch full episodes of just about any show online for free so I cancelled my tv subscription. :)

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

Xepol — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:27:57 GMT

5.0 score? Hardly ulitmate... I can buy cheap box sets with higher scores.

Now show us how to build a box that gets top scores across the board, then you can call it ultimate.

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

Titan602 — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 16:51:16 GMT

When you log on, do you have to wait ages for your PC to completely load or is it instant?

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

T Man — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:09:12 GMT

Seems like a pretty good set up. I'm at 5.3 on my primary desktop, slowed down by my video card (7900GS with a 5.3 gaming graphics score) and slower hard drive.

If anything, I'd go for the new nVidia 8800GT. Great card, at a great price.

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

tino — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:05:41 GMT

Is 5.9 the highest possible Windows Experience Index?

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

Parm — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 12:18:54 GMT

As a side side note, I've just seen the link to subscribe up at the top! Used to the subscribe link being at the bottom :)

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

Parm — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 12:14:57 GMT

Brandon, I'm using a BlackGold Dual Tuner which originally wouldn't work with an x64 OS using 4GBs of Ram. Blackgold were kind enough to offer me a set of newer drivers though which have done the trick. Though the PC I've built is a Media Center PC, it's also my day to day PC so in essence it's a EDUHTSPC (Every day use home theatre styled PC!).

I find Media Center to be a great app and use it in the evenings but it can be quite problematic. Though the potential is there, I'm not sure it's ready for the mainstream yet. Finding a tuner that works on an x64 system can prove to be hard work and now that I have one, I often suffer from stuttering TV which I can't for the life of me seem to work out.

re: Putting together the “Ultimate” PC

sboots — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 10:38:00 GMT

Sounds like a good project with good results, Brandon.

What are your thoughts on the "ultimate" laptop (light and thin, not desktop replacement) for Vista? What about the MacBook and MacBook Pro stories?

-steve